Discussions

Starting off, Jason writes about his first impressions on the symposium -- comparing it to JavaOne -- Martin Fowler and Neal Ford's keynote on Language-oriented Programming and Language Workbenches, as well as the SOA Industry Leaders Technology Panel, among other things.

There are literally thousands of attendees at JavaOne, whereas here at TSSJS, I think we are looking at more like 400 - 500 attendees in total. This seems to be working out in a number of ways:
1. We get free coffee and food, which you don’t at JavaOne :-)
2. You don’t have the same level of over crowding that you sometimes get at JavaOne sessions; so no sitting on the floor!
3. The reduced numbers in attendance also means reduced numbers of vendors. This has the knock on effect that if you are between sessions, you may struggle to find something constructive to do with your time.

The SOA panelists discussion was by far the most interesting and probably drew one of the biggest crowds of the day. This was due to a) the contentious nature of the topic and b) the quality of the panelists. The discussion was moderated by Neward, who did an excellent job of getting the attendees to ask some tough questions of the panel.

In the second entry, you can get an overview of the various technical sessions held at the conference, which include : Java Performance Myths- What Lurks Deep Inside a JVM presented by Cliff Click, Programming without a Call Stack - Event-Driven Architecture presented by Gregor Hohpe of Google, Pojo Scalability and Large Workloads with Open Terracotta presented by Jonas Bonér from Terracotta, and OSGi: A New Foundation for Enterprise Applications presented by Adrian Colyer, CTO of Interface 21.

I’ve been attending Java conferences for a number of years now, so I think, if the topic of JVM performance was new to you, you may walk away with a better insight into what is happening inside the JVM.

[On Programming without a Call Stack - Event-Driven Architecture] Gregor did a great job of comparing and contrasting call stack versus event driven architectures. Gregor coined a nice term that I hadn’t heard before in describing the hypothetical, high level architecture that is sometimes pushed by non-technical departments; Market-tecture. I like that and it accurately describes a hypothetical model that could be sold to a customer and then landed on the desk on a development team with the expectation that they can make it happen.

On the closing entry, Jason describes the last day of the conference with sessions that really caught hist interest: Cutting Edge Productivity with RIFE - Geert Bevin of Uwyn and Terracotta and A Fast Hop into Real Object Oriented (ROO) - Ben Alex of Interface 21.

If you look at what some of what RIFE has to offer: Web Application Engine, IoC Support, Authentication Framework, JDBC Abstraction Layer, Database Query Builder, Persistence Layer. Sound familiar? Geert did go out his way to mention that RIFE is not an ORM solution so at least it would not be considered as a replacement for something like Hibernate.

[ On Real Object Oriented ] Ben’s presentation may turn out to be very timely. ROO proposes that we layer our software according to strict OO principles i.e. that an object should have clearly defined state and behaviour and that this behaviour should not extend beyond the limits of the objects boundaries. A good example of this is a domain object that is Hibernate enabled. Today, this object resides in the persistence layer, but it is being serialized and passed over the network, via a set of services, to calling clients. Ben is correct in saying that this type of object, which should reside in the Domain Model layer, is specialized in conversing with whatever persistence mechanism you are using. Similarly a specialized DTO should be created for the purposes of transmitting the data across the wire with clear architectural boundaries existing between the Middle-Tier Exporting layer and the Domain Model layer.

TechTarget provides technology professionals with the information they need to perform their jobs - from developing strategy, to making cost-effective purchase decisions and managing their organizations technology projects - with its network of technology-specific websites, events and online magazines.